Happy New Year and a Happy New Decade!

So it's the end of another year and another decade too! I was 14 at the end of 2009, and things have changed a lot in my life since then. The last two and a half years in particular have been very eventful. I'll be 34 by the end of the next decade, so it's likely there will have been even more big changes in my life by that point. I wonder if I'll still be writing on this blog!

2019 has been quite a challenging year for me, but there have been many positive moments too. Although finishing university was not the happy and celebratory time it should have been, at least I now have a degree. And since then, I've qualified as a TEFL teacher and started my online teaching job. So it's been a good year in terms of my personal development. I didn't expect to still be living at home six months after graduation, but hopefully that will change soon.

Of course my travels have been some of the happiest parts of my year. I started 2019 in Santiago de Chile, celebrating New Year with my boyfriend and his family. Then we travelled to the beautiful Atacama desert before I went back to university. Since graduation, I've had two other amazing trips abroad. I spent a very memorable week volunteering in Poland with Angloville this August, and last month I went on an fairly spontaneous trip to Chile, Spain and Portugal. Poland and Portugal were new countries for me and I really enjoyed discovering both of them. This year, I also had the chance to explore some new places in England and Wales, which is something I hadn't done for a long time. It's been a year since I started documenting my travels on this blog and I feel like writing here has encouraged me to find new places to visit, particularly in my own country.

My New Year's Eve this year hasn't been quite as exciting as last year, but I did have a small travel adventure this morning, as my dad and I revisited a place in my local area that I hadn't been to for twelve years. I'll be writing a blog post about it and other nearby places very soon.

I haven't got any travel plans right now. Of course, I am still looking for a teaching job in Chile, but there isn't much work available at the moment, probably because of the current situation out there. So what 2020 will bring is a bit unclear to me right now!

All that's left to say is Happy New Year to everyone reading, and happy travels!

Image by Designecologist from pexels.com